


Follow the Frost

by somepallings



Category: Mumintroll | Moomins Series - Tove Jansson, Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi | Spirited Away
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-20 23:15:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15544338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somepallings/pseuds/somepallings
Summary: No Face moves on from Zeniba's house and meets someone a bit like him.





	Follow the Frost

In the after, after a while, I wanted to go. Granny understood and helped me. The things I had knitted, she showed me the spirits they helped in their empty times. I had learned the magic of making, and I wasn't _empty_ anymore.

There was another train, to take me on. I travelled far. I made things. I helped people and spirits, empty ones. My skill is to weave a garment and, in the weaving, bring something to the wearer. To be empty is hard, which I know, and with Granny's teachings I can help.

So I went on, travelling and spinning, from wool and from cotton and from stranger threads. Knitting for children who had lost their families, sitting beside them at night with my needles, and they never knew, but they would be wrapped in what I made and it would help them through their empty times until they found someone like Sen. Like Granny.

I spun for spirits who had forgotten where they were meant to be. I spun for a small ghost girl who had waited many centuries for her mother at the passing-point of two roads, and who cried at night and scared the travellers. When I gave her the little scarf she put it on and she remembered her mother had passed that way a hundred years before. She was afraid, she worried, she hurried off because she thought she might not find her mother, but she wasn’t _empty_ and that's better.

Eventually I drifted into a strange land, into a green valley full of life. Not many spirits, and not the kind I knew, but many friendly faces. Small beasts in the undergrowth, busy lives. Not many needed my talents. Not sure what to do, I drifted on. I found my way deep into the forests where I could spin from spider silk and moonlight, and there were some small ghosts for whom I knitted little gloves, to help them feel their way in the dark winters and to remind them who they are in the bright sun of summer.

I was moving through these strange woods one sunny midsummer night when I heard a cry, a howl that froze me in place. This cry was _empty_ and it was something else too. It was _cold._ I knew empty, but _cold_ was new. I peeked around the tree and… I saw her.

She was running swift over the ground, she stared straight ahead with her round, rolling, staring eyes, and she howled. I was undone at that howl. I had been empty, but she was _so_ empty it almost stole all the warmth and who knows what else from me, and I almost let it go to her because her need was so great.

I fell back behind the tree. I wanted to help. I started to spin. I spun some of the wool I had brought from my warm home, with the fireplace and the sweet cake and Granny. I spun some of the spider silk I had found in the south. I spun some other fibres, things from the air and the sea and the still-light summer midnight. I spun a thread that was almost true warmth by itself. It would have warmed an ice-giant.

I was spent for a while.

By the time midwinter rolled around and the days had no light at all, I was strong again. I began to knit. I knitted a pattern Granny had taught me that I had never used before. It took me a long, long time. I tried to be near the mysterious cold stranger while I knitted, remembering how the clicking of my needles helped the children I'd made for before. She was hard to be near, but she drew me to her like a moth to a candle flame. She was almost as dangerous.

I don’t know if she knew I was there. She travelled around restlessly. She sat on campfires and froze them solid, leaving the campers shivering in their sleep, not knowing she had been there. People ran from her, and she snapped at them with pointed teeth and said she’d eat their children, but then I heard her howling in the wood, the loneliest creature in any realm.

She talked to herself and sometimes to small beasts who didn’t run away. Her voice was ice and starlight and sparkling waters. She told small stories about things that were warm. She’d seen fires, she’d seen hot springs, she’d seen the midnight sun and saunas and even a comet.

She’d also seen the sea, frozen at the shore all winter. She’d seen frosted lakes. She’d seen the sky dark and twinkling with cold stars. She’d seen the hearts of the people in the valley, no love in them for her, and no love in her for them.

I finished my knitting. A pair of gloves, fine as frost, warm as my heart. Still I didn’t make myself known to her. What could I say? How could I tell her how she’d captivated me? I have no voice, not the way some people (or frogs) have.

One November night, sitting by a frosted, abandoned campfire, she quietly sang a little song into hands folded over the last remaining ember. A lullaby for a child. Did someone sing it to her once? I listened from the shadows of the wood:

_Nuku, nuku nurmilintu,_

_Väsy, väsy, västäräkki._

_Nuku nurmelle hyvälle,_

_Vaivu maalle valkialle._

I drew nearer. She softly sang the verse and then paused. She said, without looking up from the dying ember:

“So, little bird. What is it you’ve been clicking your knitting needles so incessantly over? A linen shirt? A nice skirt?”

I stepped into the moonlight. She looked up at me with round, staring eyes. She grimaced, flexing her long fingers as the ember hissed out and smoke rose in a streamer through the cold air.

I held out the gloves. “Ah”, I said, “ah”.

She rose to her full height and looked down at me. I raised my hands a little. She made no movement to take the gloves.

“Do you imagine I can do something for you in return, strange forest-spirit?” she whispered angrily, freezing the tips of my fingers with her breath.

The moonlight streamed down. I looked up at her, my cold, empty lady, out of place in this warm valley, needing something so badly and truly believing that I could give it to her.

She regarded me. I lowered my arms. I looked down. This wasn’t what I had hoped for, not what I imagined. I sank a little, feeling that _empty_ feeling. Suddenly a cold hand touched mine. I looked up, I caught my breath.

“I will not take them. I cannot take them”, she said. Vibrant living cold crackled between our fingers. She broke the contact.

“I’ll find what I seek one day, but it’s not this and it’s not today, little bird”, she said, “but it means something to me that you’ve seen me, you’ve listened to my stories, and you’ve made something for me. No-one has done that for me for a very long time”.

She shuffled backwards slightly, and I looked up again. The gloves dropped from my hands, floating softly to the ground. They melted the frost on the grass around them and a little steam drifted through the air between us.

“I’m going somewhere for a little while, little bird. Please don’t follow me this time. I’ll be back in the valley by the summer. You’ll be able to find me the usual way,” she said, “follow the frost”.

She glided off through the shadows and was gone.

I picked up the gloves and tucked them carefully into my skirts. My eyes were getting heavy and the words of her lullaby were ringing in my ears as I sat down at the base of a tree, suddenly as weary as I’d ever been. As my eyes closed, I had one firm thought.

I’d find her in the summer.

**Author's Note:**

> I had this one incredibly romantic mental image of No Face standing in the moonlight looking up adoringly at the Groke, and handing her something he'd made just for her.
> 
> The Groke still needs to go through the epiphany she has at the end of Moominpapa at Sea though, so she can't accept just yet. 
> 
> Maybe in the summer.
> 
>  
> 
> \---
> 
> You can easily find a translation of "Nuku, nuku nurmilintu" by Googling. it's very sweet and a bit sad.


End file.
